The Making of Zombie Wars

A Novel

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“Aleksandar Hemon is on fire.” —Vanity Fair“His writing style is as vital and rewarding as ever. . . . The kind of writing that pulls you in and holds you there.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Joshua Levin has a reasonably comfortable Chicago apartment, a mildly dysfunctional family sprinkled throughout the suburbs, a steady job teaching ESL, a devoted girlfriend who lives down the block, and a laptop full of screenplay ideas—one of which he thinks, might turn out to be good: Zombie Wars.

But all it takes is a few unexpected events—his already unhinged army vet of a landlord experiencing something of a psychotic break, a moment of weakness (or two) with his sultry Bosnian student—for Joshua’s life to descend into chaos. As the stakes quickly move from absurd to life-and-death matters, The Making of Zombie Wars takes on real consequence.

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Praise for The Making of Zombie Wars

“The book is funny and pleasantly loose . . . The writing is always worthy of your time. This funny, free-flowing, gloriously imperfect book has the impression of an important writer in transition, of moving from the dead toward the living, of trying to have some fun despite this land so crowded with the lost and the lamented. In the end, we are all fighting our zombie wars, and we all need stories to keep us moving.” —New York Times Book Review

“What has always been an element of sardonic humor in Hemon's work now expands into a fast-paced, darkly comic tale set in Chicago . . .deeply and comically satisfying.” —The Chicago Tribune

“The Making of Zombie Wars is crazy in the best sense of the word, and very few authors could have pulled it off - even in its most sober moments, it's still essentially absurd. But Hemon is such a brilliant prose stylist, it's impossible not to get pulled in, not just by his sense of humor, but by his startling observations about what makes us human (or something like it).” —Michael Schaub for NPR.org

“A delightful ride through an ordinary life kicking into high, crazy gear. With z… More…

“The book is funny and pleasantly loose . . . The writing is always worthy of your time. This funny, free-flowing, gloriously imperfect book has the impression of an important writer in transition, of moving from the dead toward the living, of trying to have some fun despite this land so crowded with the lost and the lamented. In the end, we are all fighting our zombie wars, and we all need stories to keep us moving.” —New York Times Book Review

“What has always been an element of sardonic humor in Hemon's work now expands into a fast-paced, darkly comic tale set in Chicago . . .deeply and comically satisfying.” —The Chicago Tribune

“The Making of Zombie Wars is crazy in the best sense of the word, and very few authors could have pulled it off - even in its most sober moments, it's still essentially absurd. But Hemon is such a brilliant prose stylist, it's impossible not to get pulled in, not just by his sense of humor, but by his startling observations about what makes us human (or something like it).” —Michael Schaub for NPR.org

“A delightful ride through an ordinary life kicking into high, crazy gear. With zombies.” —Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times

“All this zombie-spiked zaniness is boosted by Hemon's adroit style, his ability to re-create in written language the comic timing of a flawless oral delivery.” —The Washington Post

“Hemon's latest novel may be as humorous as its title indicates, but The Making of Zombie Wars doesn't shy away from the challenging topics” —Paste Magazine

“At once unimaginable and unforgettable.” —Time, a Best Book of the Year on The Book of My Lives

“An extraordinary story.” —The New Yorker on The Book of My Lives

“Acute meditations on exile and otherness, and the redeeming power of language.” —The Economist, a Best Book of the Year on The Book of My Lives

“As crowded as the pool of contemporary writers wrestling with the American experience has become . . . no discussion is complete without Aleksandar Hemon.” —Chicago Tribune, a Best Book of the Year on The Book of My Lives

“A powerful, masterful work from one of our most significant literary writers, at once madcap and thoughtful, exhilarating and devastating.”—The National Post (Toronto)

Reviews from Goodreads

Aleksandar Hemon

Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and three books of short stories: The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Love and Obstacles. He was the recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship and a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. He lives in Chicago.